Randwick Precinct Cancer Roundtable - Pancreatic Cancer [August 28th 2018]

New Precision Medicine Approaches for Pancreatic Cancer

Interactive discussion facilitated by Dr Koroush Haghighi

Hepatopancreatobiliary, Transplant, General and Laparoscopic Surgeon

Dr Koroush Haghighi is a recognised expert in liver and pancreatic surgery with extensive experience in complex and extended resections requiring major vascular reconstructions. As a consultant specialist at Prince of Wales and St Vincent’s public and private hospitals, he performs more than 150 major liver and pancreatic resections per year.

Invited speaker – Professor Chris Heeschen

Head of the Stem Cells & Cancer Group, UNSW Sydney

Professor Heeschen runs an integrated basic and translational research program, with a particular focus on pancreatic cancer. Building on his original landmark discovery of pancreatic cancer stem cells and the heterogeneity therein, his groups has now began to dissect the molecular traits of stemness in pancreatic cancer, including their specific metabolic features, epigenetic regulators and immune escape mechanism.

At UNSW, the group will now continue studying the cellular heterogeneity and hierarchy of pancreatic cancer down to single cells and developing novel precision medicine approaches for this deadly disease with unmet medical need.

Topics for discussion

1. Isolation, characterisation, and propagation of (circulating) cancer stem cells

2. Functional in vivo taxonomy of pancreatic cancer stem cells to identify new targets

3. Pre-clinical development of multimodal therapies for pancreatic cancer

4. Developing CAR T cell-based immunotherapies for pancreatic cancer